The present invention relates to a method for analyzing cursive writing, in which elementary forms are recognized in a word written with cursive writing letters or groups of letters are reconstructed from the elementary forms. A dictionary of groups of possible letters is searched for groups identical to resembling the groups constructed from the forms extracted from the writing. A plurality of strings of characters capable of corresponding to the word to be recognized are delivered.
The automatic recognition of manuscript characters allows more natural communication between a user and a computer, without using a keyboard. The function transforms cursive or "script" strokes into a string of characters. In this context, the present invention recognizes writing by recording the motion of the pen and by recognizing words with the aid of a lexicon.
A process for analyzing cursive writing is described in the document EP-A-0 564 827 (International Business Machines). In this process, the written words are compared with those from a dictionary and those which resemble one another sufficiently are regarded as possible, this delivering a list of words. Each word of the list is assigned a score. The word having the best score is chosen.
Current strategies in the field of the recognition of writing focus on the direction of writing (from right to left in western writing). However, the complexity of the problem does not allow the definition of an obvious strategy of analysis. In fact, there is a substantial lack of a priori information.